Subjects

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

“…cause that’s all you ever hear about in this country is our
differences. That’s all the media and
the politicians are ever talking about, the things that separate us, things
that make us different from each other…They try to divide the rest of the
country. They keep the classes fighting with each other…” - George Carlin

“…In fine, we thought he was
everything/To make us wish that we were in his place./

So on we worked and waited for the light,/And
went without the meat, and cursed the bread;/ And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,/ Went home and put a
bullet through his head. – Edwin Arlington Robinson

Playing to the Gallery (the sinister
appeal of HJRCA 49)

Idiom: In brief, playing to the gallery means to seek popular acclaim.
The expression’s origin is from the theater, and it describes the message or
content of the play as written for the less intelligent or to those who could
not afford the best seats in the house and therefore had to sit in the cheaper gallery. In later years it became a way to describe
the person who cheapens his own abilities while seeking the approval of the uneducated
populace, appealing to base instincts and interests. And
this brings us to Speaker Madigan’s Constitutional Amendment HJRCA 49, passed by
all but two senators in the General Assembly.

Madigan’s HJRCA 49 plays to the gallery by exploiting the very real anger
and envies that can separate all of us, yet the amendment ironically does
nothing to ameliorate any of the fiscal woes that our State and its citizenry face. On the surface, Madigan’s Constitutional Amendment
promises to make it tougher to provide pension benefit increases by requiring a
three-fifths vote by both houses.

In fact, there is no part of the proposed Amendment that
will assist in the paying down of the unfunded liability, which threatens to
strangle the state’s financial budget.
There is nothing that works to relieve the state from the madness of an ill
designed ramp-up developed in 1995 (P.A. 88-0593), one which guarantees a
tsunami of increasing payments into 2035. No attempt is made to alleviate or
address the possibly federally prohibited forced payment of extra compensation
by Tier Two employees. In every sense, HJRCA 49 represents Speaker
Madigan’s utmost cynical political gesture and his complete disdain for the
people on all sides; and thereby, as usual, we all become victims of his intrigues.

HJRCA 49 is crafted to appease the “gallery,” or for
those who sorely seek revenge. Nearly
half a decade into the Great Recession, the toll on the shocked middle class in
this country and state has understandably rendered people permanently economically
injured and justifiably angry.

Some very few examples:

“…the typical
American family lost nearly 40% of its wealth between 2007 and 2010, shaving
the median net worth to (lower) levels not seen since the early 1990’s” (Lee,
Don. Recession cut wealth by 40%. Chicago Tribune. 12 June 2012).

Indeed, this is fertile soil for sowing seeds of hate
and anger; perfect bedding for something like Speaker Madigan’s HJRCA 49.

Add to that the emotionalism and strident catchwords
of the corporate owned media and the local power groups like the Civic
Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Indeed, the Chicago Tribune often highlights its singular role in successfully
assisting Madigan’s proposal for a vote in November.

For years, the Chicago Tribune has been concentrating on the
exceptional and unacceptable manipulators of pensions in the public arena
(Chicago Labor Leaders, previous members of the General Assembly, the previous
Mayor of Chicago, public school administrators seeking work outside the state
after receiving a large pension), and subsequently applying those spectacular
sins to the “much too generous” pensions for public unions entirely. After all, it’s not the unique nor the
extraordinary the Tribune is after; it is all of us in the public sector. On every opportunity, the Chicago Tribune
decries the basic concepts of collective bargaining. Witness the drawing by their
political cartoonist Scott Stantis a day after Scott Walker’s failed recall in
Wisconsin. And, while the choice of
images – a gorilla-like caricature in a zoot suit – is simple and puerile, it
does echo the kind of anger we hear directed at collective bargaining across
the board from the Tribune. In short, like
Speaker Madigan, the Tribune also plays (or screams) to the gallery.

And
who is the gallery? Why, it is of course
all of us – people who live in a state awash in debt and burdened by bills that
have been grown to mountainous proportion – gifts from our political
predecessors, some incarcerated and some walking blithely about.

And in Springfield? Even our best politicians face daunting
challenges to understand the basics of needed pension reform, intelligent changes
in tax structuring, a better methodology to tackle the unfunded liability. It takes considerable time and mental energy
to separate these items, much less make serious decisions about how to correct
them. Instead, the legislators often
find themselves coerced or coaxed to accept whatever appears before them. Representative Bost (R- Murphysboro) made abundantly clear what many of his
colleagues say in closed rooms to each other and their constituents( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuynpMeDxTA
). On the other hand, HJRCA 49’s four
pages is seemingly simple, apparently commonsensical, and outwardly direct –
very much the opposite of Speaker Michael Madigan and his political mind.

It would be inspiring to imagine leadership in Illinois that
makes changes to the fiscal policies of the State of Illinois to revolutionize
and remedy the budget issues, the result of decades of under funding the pensions
needed costs. The Speaker chooses not to
do so. Instead, Madigan chooses to play
a deadly game pitting one group of workers against another, neighbor against
neighbor, and possibly using the amendment to close the door on the state’s
contractual pension obligations for all time.

HJRCA demonstrates the lowest and most vicious form of contemptuous
political expression emerging from an assembly of the supposedly conscientious.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

When we listen to Governor
Pat Quinn or the Chicago Tribune decry the problems facing Illinois after years
of underfunding the pension systems, we catch the words “pension crisis” over
and over. Yesterday evening at the
gathering of the West Lake Shore Unit of the IRTA, I tried to make clear that
it is not nor was it ever a “pension crisis.”
It is instead a debt issue
called the unfunded liability. Our
legislators need to understand that as well.
To do otherwise – to continue to call the problem a “pension crisis” - is
to paint public service as an onerous drain on the past, current, and future of
the people of Illinois.

Public service is anything
but that.

The unfunded liability – the
result of decades of little or even no payments by the state to match the
contributions made by millions of past and current employees now reaches an
estimated $83 billion. To understand the
enormousness of this arrogant breach of responsibility, we can examine Governor
Quinn’s mantra that for every day the General Assembly does not act; the state
loses another $12.6 million. That
amount, sufficient to run four or five small businesses for three or four years, is only
a fraction of the debt Illinois now owes in the unfunded liability. In fact, $12.6 million is only 1.5/10,000th
of the actual $83 billion.

The cost of not addressing this
debt crisis has begun to disrupt the
state’s ability to provide needed services at an increasing rate.

The Ramp-Up

The enactment in 1995 of a
flawed Public Law 88-593, also called the Pension Ramp Up – exacerbates the
inability to solve the debt the
General Assembly now faces. The bill set
forth an ambitious schedule of increasing payments, both actuarially and
logically unsound, which was designed to bring the five pension systems into
90% funding by 2045. Instead, the Ramp Up
has created an escalating required payment that increases so rapidly
(especially in a slow or depressed economic period) that honoring the payments
will take greater and greater portions of the general revenue fund in each
successive year. According to the Office
of the Governor, the debt is now taking 13% or more of the general revenue
fund. Next year’s jump in required payment
will be nearly 20% - from this year’s $4 billion to next year’s 5.09 billion (http://wuisnews.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/center-for-tax-and-budget-accountabilitys-ralph-martire-on-pensions/ ).

Instead of a Ramp-Up, the
debt (unfunded liability) needs to be restructured and amortized as any real,
sensible credit repayment plan should be.
In other words, the payment this year should be the same as next year,
and so on until the debt is repaid. The
“mortgage” could be reconfigured for a date well beyond 2045. Remember when we all purchased that house or
auto? At first the payments seemed
daunting, but over time they became a manageable part of our monthly
budget. For the state, the pain in the
initial years would be offset by the knowledge that the annual amount necessary
to pay back would remain unchanged in the decades to come. Likewise, this method
would provide for a stable expectation for needs in each year’s budget
process. Perhaps even the bond rating
company Standard and Poor’s would take notice of this new responsibility.

So far, the bills that have
been brought forth by members of the General Assembly to fix the debt crisis have consisted of cuts to the benefits previously provided and perhaps
guaranteed by the Illinois Constitution in Article XIII, Section 5. If the past and currently proposed bills are typical,
legislators in Illinois are seeking the wrong solutions: trying to fix an
enormous debt and an impossible pay-back scheme by taking benefits from
retired, current and future workers.
Even if such scapegoating were not morally reprehensible, it will not
generate the funds necessary to pay down the debt the General Assembly has
accrued.

The director of the Center
for Tax and Budget Accountability Ralph Martire warns that all of the proposed
cuts to benefits passed collectively will provide only millions; in fact, he
adds that such a draconian solution will only provide about 25% of the monies
needed to deal with the ongoing debt (unfunded liability). The coercive and cynical choices between
health care or compounded COLA’s, the increases in contributions, the
consideration of taxing retiree income, capping benefits, extending age
requirements – will not solve the debt problem in Illinois. Taking millions from the public sector will
not generate the billions needed to resolve the debtcrisis.

In order to generate the
billions of dollars needed to resolve the debt crisis, we need to change the
current tax structure from a flat tax to a graduated tax system. Illinois is one of only seven states left in
the country to hold to an antiquated flat tax system. Yesterday
evening, I described the latest loss of a dynamic business enterprise to our
neighbor state Iowa. A global company
from Egypt, Orascom, has decided to build its $1.4 billion operating plant four
miles away from Illinois’ border. The
head of the company, Nassef Sawiris, described the unpromising look of
Illinois’ balance sheet as reason for the decision. In fact, Iowa has a graduated income tax system. According to the Center for Tax and Budget
Accounting, replacing our flat tax system with the system Iowa has in place
would provide an additional $6.3 billion in annual revenue. In addition, the move to a graduated tax
would bring tax relief to nearly 94% of all taxpayers in Illinois.

In January, a lame duck
General Assembly will reconvene. Madigan
has hinted that “pension reform” may be accomplished in that session. It would not be unlikely for Governor Quinn
to call for a special session in January before the swearing in of new
legislators on the second Wednesday. You
will remember that the last tax increases in Illinois were accomplished in a
January lame duck session. Speculation
places the possible number of lame duck legislators at between 25 and 40. Also, consider that bills need only a
majority in January, not the super-majority needed in November.

It is my hope that this
information helps you in your conversations with your legislators. Please contact your representative and
senator now.

Friday, October 19, 2012

“It’s
a very sad day when a Democratic General Assembly will make cuts on the backs
of children…I don’t think the way to balance the budget is to make children
uninsured.” - Anne Marie Murphy,
Executive Director Chicago Metropolitan Breast Cancer Task Force (SJ-R.com)

“And in each and every meeting she had
with me, our staff and with the working group, she would bring more reforms and
cuts for consideration. I truly believe without our team member, Patti
Bellock, at
the table the Medicaid package would have been so much weaker than then what
was signed into law.” - House Republican
Leader Tom Cross

Crocodile
Tears (“Patti & the Poor”) Pt. 2

Idiom: Crocodile
tears describe a false or bogus pretense of grief or sadness over a decision or
action. “It is proverbial that a
crocodile moans and sobs like a person in great distress in order to lure a man
into its reach, and then, after devouring him sheds bitter tears over the dire
fate of its victim” (Charles Funk. Hog
on Ice & Other Curious Expressions. Harper Colophon. 1985.) Even Shakespeare describes this common,
colloquial belief in his works on more than several occasions.

ON The Passage of the Medicaid Bill (SB2840)

“Some of my best friends” are
not homeless, but a good number of my friends are. After working in homeless shelters and acting
as a site manager for many years, I have come to know too many people who try to
exist on the street during the most intemperate
conditions. The winter is indeed a harsh
mistress. On the coldest evenings, we all
eat together, talk together, argue sports trades, discuss good and
less-than-good movies, question politics, tell a joke, share a story…in short,
we are just people – except for my better fortune. By and large, what separates my friends and
me is not necessarily “There but for the grace of God”; more likely it is “There for the grace of not having a medical
catastrophe…” In almost every case, there were no nets to
catch my friends from the “outrageous slings and arrows” of tumors, diabetes,
stroke, aneurism, and so on. I might
tell you, after Governor Quinn’s signature on the latest Medicaid cuts brought
to you by ALEC-award-winning Rep. Patti Bellock (Westmont) and Heather Steans
(Chicago), winter could be especially cruel this year.

In June,
Governor Quinn signed into law several bills that will enact huge cuts to the
health care services and Medicaid programs which deprive hundreds of thousands
of Illinois’ lowest income classes of residents from services and assistance
starting last month in July. Total costs
“saved” may include nearly $2.7 billion in multiple layers (www.sj-r.com/top-stories/1842810731/Winner-losers-in-2-7B-package-of-cuts-reforms). That’s a lot
of money – and it’s more than a lot of people.
Here’s what’s going to happen:

Nearly 3000 – 4000 children
will be removed from the universal income eligibility for offspring, a politically
unwanted and orphaned child of ex-Governor Blagojevich – albeit a saving grace
to thousands of lower income families before his fall from grace (www.
Sj-r.com/top-stories/x188778215/New-Medicaid-law-Needed-reform-or-Scrooge-like?zc_p=1).

More than 25,000 parents lost
Medicaid coverage as of July 1, 2012. A
bit more than the population of Representative Bellock’s constituency in
Westmont, Illinois.

According to reporter Christian Davion, $15
million provided for critical medical and in-home nursing will be cut for
families, which will now face insurmountable medical costs for full-time
hospitalization [rather than home ventilators, oxygen, feeding tubes, etc.] (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/illi-j20.shtml).

Another $72.2 million will be
cut by eliminating Illinois Cares Rx, the state program that offers
prescription drug discounts to over 180,000 citizens from low-income households
who are elderly and/or suffer from disabilities. (www.
Sj-r.com/top-stories/x188778215/New-Medicaid-law-Needed-reform-or-Scrooge-like?zc_p=1).

Family Care for those
families (two person household) making more than $20,000 annually will see
their access to assistance stopped immediately.

While this may seem injurious
to those in the shady area that hovers just above a basic $20,000, Republican
Senator Dale Righter of Matoon, IL, rationalizes this as an appropriate line in
the sand: “We need to incentivize the providers to make the Medicaid population
healthier. To me, this is about pay for
performance” (www.
Sj-r.com/top-stories/x188778215/New-Medicaid-law-Needed-reform-or-Scrooge-like?zc_p=1). In other words, let’s target the most
desperate cases while eliminating the merely needy. With that logic, those struggling people
working at basic service jobs earning just over $20,000 annually are doing well
enough to no longer deserve medical assistance, even if they have kids.

Podiatric
services will also be curtailed – unless you can prove you are diabetic. My homeless friends slog through the deepest
and coldest wet snows without work (while looking) and without footwear
(desperately looking), and limp their way into shelters each evening. Want to hide out in the library? – Not
allowed. Go to an emergency room? – Not
for long. Stand in a foyer? – Keep
moving. The bottom line is stay on your
feet all day and keep walking. Now, if
you’re not a proven diabetic with paperwork - No more medical assistance.

Sadly, there’s more. Nursing Care advocates also warn that this
bill will jeopardize nursing home care as a result of cutting Medicaid
reimbursement rates for nursing home operators.
Behind closed doors, state officials working on the bill to cut Medicaid
costs agreed to lower the set levels of care that had existed prior to the
bill’s passage for care standards. That’s
right, reduced standards. State Senator
Jacqueline Collins noted, “They did an end run around the process. It was a disservice to the democratic
process. Clout, money, and influence
determined the outcome” (www.blog.levinperconti.com/2012/05/illinis_medicaid_cuts_could_a.html).

Of course, some of our “indigent
and chronic” are not without mental issues.
Did you think our legislators would find some port in the storm of cuts
for anyone hearing voices in his head? “The
National Alliance on Mental Illness has ranked Illinois as the number one state
in the US for budget cuts to mental health services for 2011, with the state
having eliminated 31 percent of its total budget since 2008. Including Quinn’s latest proposal for an
additional 40 percent in cuts from state mental health programs, which includes
shutting down six of the state’s twelve remaining mental health facilities. Illinois will have cut over 71 percent of its
funding for mental health services and programs over the past five years” (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/illi-j20.shtml).

Sorry, my friends. And, if it is the “winter of their
discontent,”

not to worry; they are so
marginalized and without any political enfranchisement that whatever pain falls
on them will not make a mite of difference to the rest of us.

August 17th
will provide the Illinois General Assembly a chance to move toward pension
reform – like they did for Medicaid reform – after failing to make payments to
the pensions for nearly 60 years. This
last Medicaid bill will result in a loss of nearly $1.35 million in Federal
funding for Medicaid and the coffers in Illinois, as well as a consequent
impact upon the employment of nearly 250,000 people in the state medical
systems (http://familiesusa2.org/assets/pdfs/Illinois-Medicaid-Cuts-2012.pdf ).

Imagine what they can do to the machine that
provides over $4 billion in economic energy a year in Illinois. Say a prayer – for yourself and my
friends.

First published in August of 2012 in Pension Education“To expand this program
(Medicaid) is not unlike adding a thousand people to the Titanic…People come
from all over the globe to the state of Texas for their Healthcare.” - Rick
Perry on his refusal to accept additional Medicaid for Texas

“I have been forced to support
the establishments I have mentioned through taxation and God knows they cost
more than they’re worth…If they’d rather die, then they had better do it and
decrease the surplus population.” - Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas
Carol

A.L.E.C.
(“Patti & the Poor”) Pt.1

Acronym – (American Legislative Exchange Council) ALEC is an assemblage of over 2000 legislative members and more
than 300 corporate entities whose design and purpose is to seek direct access
to politicians on the federal and state levels, provide forums and in-service
on crafting “model” legislation, and expert/lobbyist assistance in creating or
writing bills to take back to legislative capitols across the country. Think Corporations
Gone Wild.

According to ALEC Exposed,
corporate members pay an annual fee of up to $25,000 to participate in ALEC’s
agenda ( and additional sums for influential membership in a specific task
forces) while legislators are asked to
donate only $50 to join the “not-for-profit” organization. Additional funding arrives under such nominal
cosmetics as grants: for example, $1.4 million from Exxon Corporation. Not surprisingly, Koch Industries have a beginning
and continuing heavy influence in the operation of ALEC.

“ALEC’s
appeal rests largely on the fact that legislators receive an all-expenses-paid
trip that provides many part-time legislators with vacations that they could
not afford on their own, along with the opportunity to rub shoulders with
wealthy captains of industry [major prospective out-of-state donors to their
political campaigns]” (http://alecexposed.org/wiki/What_is_ALEC%3F ).

Legislators’
entire families are invited and childcare is provided during after-session
parties and cocktail gatherings. One
might imagine that lubricated shop talk would likely not include the benefits
of collective bargaining; in fact, although ALEC describes itself as
non-partisan, the leadership circle of over 100 politicians includes only one
lone democrat – amidst such luminaries as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Rick
Perry (see above quote), Gov. Scott Walker, Gov. Jan Brewer, Newt Gingrich,
Eric Cantor, the Koch brothers, and significant others.

In
Illinois, ALEC has another leadership circle working on the state and local
level to effect legislation, which aims at supporting free markets, reducing
the size of government, and promoting a conservative/corporate agenda.

In fact, Illinois holds the distinction of having the ALEC State Representative of the year: Representative Patricia “Patti” Bellock of
the 47th district (Westmont Office). A recent letter of congratulations from
Republican House Leader Tom Cross – also a member of ALEC - glowed with the kind of Orwellian political doublespeak that sanitizes the actual undercutting of the
medically needy or marginalized with positive parsing.

Dear Friend,

Please join me in congratulating State Rep. Patti Bellock
for being named “Legislator of the Year” by the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) for her extensive work on Medicaid reform.

Rep. Bellock spent thousands of hours in meetings crafting Medicaid reforms that protected
the most vulnerable while helping put our Medicaid system back on a path toward
financial stability. This was by no means an easy task. All
along the way, she faced
strong resistance from many Democrats and interest groups who want to see
Medicaid expanded, not reduced. Once initial reforms were enacted into
law, Bellock still had to fight to see commonsense measures like her recapture audit and residency
verification implemented. Rep. Bellock is still leading the fight to ensure
implementation of all the reforms we
have passed and is working with staff to
craft additional Medicaid Reform measures.

I remember several times this session when Rep.
Bellock came into my office and said, ‘I think now is the time that we need to push for more reforms, this
is our opportunity to push as hard as we can.’ And in each and every
meeting she had with me, our staff and with the working group, she would
bring more reforms and cuts for consideration. I
truly believe without our team member, Patti Bellock, at the table the Medicaid
package would have been so much weaker
than then what was signed into law.

Rep. Bellock was recognized for her efforts at
ALEC’s Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah this
past Friday. She was nominated by several of her
colleagues for this prestigious national award. Patti Bellock is highly
deserving of this recognition and we should all be proud of her, her past
accomplishments, and those still to come.

Sincerely,

Tom Cross

House Republican Leader

State Representative, 84th District

And what better individual to sit upon the committee to design the
necessary cuts in Medicaid for the State of Illinois’ fiscal health (irony
there, eh?) – after all, Rep. Bellock sits on the ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force. And besides Bellock, ALEC’s Health and Human
Services Task Force includes many corporate parties supposedly interested in
what’s best for all of us needing health services. I’ve randomly selected only 8 of 40 corporate
members provided to help and assist curious legislators. For the entire list, please feel free to seek
out their records on healthcare work – especially for the poor ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Health_and_Human_Services_Task_Force
).

CIBA-GEIGY – Investigative
reporters blew the whistle on chemical companies like this in 1980’ for
offloading excess chemicals banned in Europe or the U.S. ( http://www.wordnik.com/words/Ciba-Geigy).

In November, a proposal to
amend the Illinois Constitution will appear on the voting machine/sheet in your
local polling place. It seeks to amend
the current section in Article XIII, Section V, of the Illinois Constitution
that presently states the following:

Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit
of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality
thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of
which shall not be diminished or impaired.

Not surprisingly, the
additional Madigan Amendment #49 to this earlier Section V is nearly 24 times longer than the original, simply crafted
section.

In fact, (see above) the
original Section V is only 40
words. This new addition in HJRCA#49 generated
by Speaker Michael Madigan is nearly 933 words, and it reflects the kind of byzantine and convoluted writing that
will result in myriad questions, perpetual litigation, and eternal public
sector vs. government conflict.

If you’ve
received your pamphlet from Jesse White, you’ve had the opportunity to read
it. Confused? You should be.

Is this what we want?

Michael Madigan, the master
of political magic, has witnessed, endured and orchestrated a myriad of byzantine maneuvers to cover himself
and his position for 30 years in
power as the House Speaker.

This last work – HJRCA #49 may be his finest masterpiece
or his first accidental transparency.

Madigan’s Amendment is Convoluted: Employing
ambiguous phrasing like “emolument increases,” and providing nearly 400 words
to describe (or obfuscate) what determines a “benefit increase,” the proposed
Madigan Amendment offers not much else than confusion in the present. As for the future of those firemen, teachers,
police, and public servants in Illinois, Madigan’s Amendment promises
bewilderment at the very least and substantial pain at the very most:

Nothing in this Section shall prevent
the passage or adoption of any law, ordinance, resolution, rule, policy, or
practice that further restricts the ability to provide a “benefit increase”,
emolument increase”, or “beneficial determination” as those terms are used
under this Section.

Results: Adoption of this Amendment promises a new
growth industry in class action lawsuits against the State of Illinois, myriad
portals for eager lawyers willing to interpret sloppily written legalese, and uncertainty for prospective employees considering working in Illinois as public
servants. Say good-bye to good
firefighters, police, teachers, etc. Forget ever reversing the inequities for Tier Two employees.

Madigan’s Amendment plays upon Appearances: HJRCA #49
looks like action, of some kind, and it plays on the emotions of those who have
come to believe that the pension crisis in the State of Illinois can be solved
by writing new law to prevent public servants from securing a retirement that
media and politicians have decried as exorbitant.

Reality:
HJRCA #49 is the child of hysteria wrought by Tribune Watchdogs and others
regarding the very few (and culpable) characters who have indeed taken
advantage of pensions – but NOT the hundreds of thousands of retired workers
who have dutifully paid into them for their lives’ services. AND HJRCA #49 does NOT address in any way
whatsoever the real problem with the “pension crisis.” The Madigan Amendment avoids any real
response to the unfunded liability of over $80 billion facing the State of
Illinois. In fact, Speaker Mike, who
oversaw the increases in so many people’s benefits during his tenure in the
House, bills that were passed nearly unanimously, has once again created a
canard in which he appears to have done something popular while squirming on in
his political career. It is safe to say
that the Speaker’s ability to generate the votes necessary to approve a benefit
change or disapprove will not be affected by a 3/5ths requirement anyway. This, once again, is just window dressing,
for Speaker Madigan.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Legislative
Amendment (Although this
Vocabulary first appeared in Pension Vocabulary in October of 2011, it is all
the more poignant as we deal with proposed amendment HJRCA49.)

“It is conceivable that a legislator who is not running for
re-election and who is under the inauspicious and officious influence of the
Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and other legislators will
write and propose an amendment to the Illinois constitution before exiting the
General Assembly, thereby challenging the 'Pension Clause' once again and;
thus, we must prepare for a constitutional revision" (We Must Prepare for a Constitutional Revision).

Unfortunately, in a
state where appearances trump realities, an influential and powerful Speaker of
the House Madigan was able to generate an unnecessary and confounding proposed
legislative amendment (HJRCA#49) before the people in the November
elections. More about the topsy-turvy
complexities of this badly drafted bill later.
First, let’s be very aware of how the legislative amendment process
differs from others and how it is voted on specifically in Illinois.

In Illinois, two procedures can be used to make amendments to
the Illinois Constitution, both of which will eventually face the approval or
disapproval of the voting public. In truth, we might argue that either a
Constitutional Convention might bring such a possibility or that a court's
interpretation might be the same as an amendment, but a truly new request for a
proposed amendment is more likely to come to all of us in Illinois by one of
two processes.

One is an Initiative Amendment Process: This occurs when
an amendment is placed upon a ballot based upon the request (or initiative) of
the citizens of Illinois. In order to proceed, a set number of voters must sign
a petition to request an amendment. “This initiative method was included to
give the voter the possibility of changing the constitution even if the
legislature was unwilling to do so” (Understanding the Illinois Constitution ) In order to declare such an initiative, a percentage of voters equaling at
least 8% in the previous gubernatorial election must be identified on the
petition...

NOT
VERY LIKELY.

WHAT
WOULD BE MORE LIKELY?

Another
is a Legislative Amendment Process: An
individual in the House or Senate of the General Assembly creates and proposes
an amendment, often at the sanction of leadership. In this case, the proposed
amendment must seek the approval and vote of both houses of the General
Assembly by a three-fifths endorsement. No more than three articles of the
constitution may be amended in any election; in the case of the public
pensions, the single target would probably be Article XIII, Section 5: “Membership
in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government
or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an
enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be
diminished or impaired.”

WHAT
HAPPENS THEN?

Regardless of whether a proposed amendment comes from the
legislature or through the initiative process, it must be placed on the ballot
at the next general election and must be approved by three-fifths of those
voting on the amendment or by a majority of those voting in the election. Some
voters choose not to vote on amendments at all, while others choose to vote
only on them; thus, the need for a fractional difference as per the Illinois
Constitution (Article IV).

In
short, a positively accepted and proposed amendment from either the public or a
member of the legislature will be an opportunity for the citizenry of Illinois
to make an alteration in the existing framework of the Constitution of the
State of Illinois.

About Me

I am a retiree, political activist, social advocate and community volunteer. I taught at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange for 34 years in the Language Arts classroom and worked as an administrator for several years. My current avocations include various community outreach and assistance programs. Having benefitted from employment in a collegial, reflective teaching environment that encouraged dedication and professionalism, I continue to seek the promotion of education at all levels as a long-term effort combining talent, perseverance, commitment, and constant professional growth - not a blind adherence to a business model of measured production.

Copyrights & Fair Use

This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of issues vital to a democracy. I believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.